la cabra montesa

Went for a hike on Saturday with English friend Dave (a TtMadrid alum) and his Spanish friend Ricardo.

We met at Plaza de Castilla a little after 11am and took Ricardo's car to the countryside. We were supposed to be going somewhere called Revenga but the GPS system took us on a scenic route (avoiding freeways) to some little back street in Segovia, about 20km off track, and we had to keep stopping to ask for directions and it took us about 2.5 hours to get there when it should've taken us only an hour.

The good thing about male Spanish drivers: they are not shy about asking for directions. When they realize they are lost, they will stop anywhere and ask anyone for directions.

The bad thing about some Spanish drivers: road rage. Seriously, I thought we were going to rear-end the poor guy in front of us we were following so close. And Ricardo kept screaming, "Why are you braking, you useless piece of shit?!" (or something similar to that) as we came up on hair-pin curves and the guy in front of us slowed down to avoid driving right off the road. I really wanted to say something, but the thing about people with road rage in my experience is that telling them to calm down only seems to make them angrier, so I stayed silent.

When we finally got to the hiking spot, I just about jumped for joy. Not only was I super relieved to be released from the death-trap, but it was an absolutely gorgeous day and we were going to hike through a real forest with real trees and undergrowth and animals and everything. Hooray for nature walks!

The hike itself lasted about three hours, with breaks. It was very pretty and relatively uneventful. Three highlights, though.

Highlight one: We met some amateur cyclists about halfway through the trek and stopped to chat for a bit and compare maps. There were three of them, and two of them were quite cute. The one with the map who was doing most of the talking had a very nice, clear voice and I was stoked I could understand the majority of what he was saying. The second hottie and I started talking when his friends took off on their bikes to scout out the trail just up ahead. His name was Carlos and we shared a love of writing. I told him about my TtMadrid blog and he asked for the web address. Am hoping he leaves his email or something so I can ask him out on a date, though I'm not holding my breath.

Highlight two: Ricardo kept flirting with me the entire hike. While I appreciated the attention to an extent, after a while I got tired of it. He is not a bad looking man, he is single and in my age range, but the road rage and his occasional tendency to become mister-know-it-all and try to boss me around were major turn-offs. (Not that I am perfect either, but seeing my own faults in others is particularly annoying and repellant.)

Highlight three: Toward the end of the trek we ran into some bulls. Unfenced, and on our side of the river. They were large animals with very strong, pointy horns, and they looked particularly menacing because they would pause in chewing their cud to stare us down, as if trying to decide whether we were a threat that needed to be dealt with. We did our best to avoid them and in the end (when none of them charged us) we decided that they would probably not let aggressive toros graze on public hiking grounds, but it certainly was exciting there for a bit.

One other thing that was cool was that it was a good day for practicing Spanish. I basically spoke Spanish all day long because Ricardo didn't speak much English so Dave and I spoke with each other and with him in Spanish so he wouldn't feel left out, and I spoke Spanish with the cyclists too. Felt very accomplished.

The ride home was luckily a lot less nerve-wracking because we just took the freeway and there were no hair-pin curves or "slow" drivers to worry about. Ricardo left Dave and I at a northern metro stop, saying something about he and I getting together sometime. I made a non-commital response and said good-bye as fast as politeness would allow, glad to be out of the car and escaping unwanted attentions. The end.

Dave has promised to send me the photos that he took, and when that happens I will post one here.